Day 1: Ash Wednesday

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 Psalm 51
*Mark 1:1-13*
1 John 1:5-10

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.   ~Mark 1:4

And so Lent begins --just as the Gospel of Mark begins--with the a call to repentance.
“I preach about sin because I believe in mercy. And I believe in mercy because I know how quickly even my stupidest, most ordinary sins can drag me into a spiral of misery. I’ll be mean, or lazy, or selfish, and feel bad about it, and so I’ll become meaner, lazier, less interested in thinking about anybody else. That inward-driving force, which takes the mind prisoner and locks the soul in solitary confinement, nourishes even the smallest sin and makes living with it essentially hell.
And the only way out of it, on Ash Wednesday as on any day, is repentance. Not feeling bad, but changing. Not pouring ashes on your head in a fit of self-loathing, but allowing Jesus to spit gently into a handkerchief and scrub off your face.”
—Sara Miles, “Witness to the Dark” from Christian Century 
Ashes to ashes. Dust to Dust...


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